Belgium Beer Festival, Cargo Bar, Ho Chi Minh City

This past weekend there was a Belgium beer festival in Ho Chi Minh City! 

It was held at Cargo Bar in district 2. Cargo bar is a big warehouse on the docks which has been turned into a venue for live music and other events. Since most of the events are loud music events, I don't go here often.

They had a number of beer stands with different Belgium beers. I'm guessing there were about 20 beers overall.

As you can see it was pretty busy and I'm sure pretty much every expat in Ho Chi Minh City attended. It was very busy in the big warehouse which along with the incredibly hot weather and no air conditioning made for a very sweaty event.

Most people from my office went and we all had a pretty good time. This is the second year in a row they have done the BBF, I hope they can do it again next year and possibly include beer festivals from other countries around the world.

It's hot! 2016

It's that time of year again where the weather keeps getting hotter and hotter until the rain comes next month. We're getting to the peak of the heat and it's hot. Below is the forecast for today's weather.

Yes, it is always hot here but there are many levels of hot and its the real feel that gets you, which at the moment is in the early 40s. I really don't know what I'd do without air conditioning. It would be unbearable without it. 

Fortunately most of the day I'm inside at my desk or at home but when you go out for something to eat it really hits you.

Last day in Taiwan! Maokong Gondola and Tamsui

So, the last day of our holiday has arrived but we still had a busy day ahead of us. We had an early start and went to the last metro stop to go on the Maokong Gondola. This is a Gondola that takes you up into the mountains. 

This took about 20 minutes and gave more great views of the countryside. At the top of the mountain was a little town famous for growing tea. You can buy all sorts of tea products. Tea, tea ice cream and tea soap to name but a few.

I did have a very strange eating experience whilst on the mountain. It was an ice cream wrap with grated peanut and coriander.

I'm not sure how this came around but I can tell you that coriander does not go with ice cream and ice cream doesn't really go with wraps.

On the way back we managed to get a Gondola with a glass floor! Cool!

In the early afternoon we made our way to another last stop on the metro, a place called Tamsui. It took about 30 minutes to get to and really felt like you were leaving the city.

It was a lovely place right on the coast and very relaxing. We chilled out in the park, looked around and had some more nice food before our long night ahead of us flying home.

Also in Tamsui I had the biggest Ice cream I've ever had in my life. I wasn't put off by the early incident with the ice cream wrap. 

So, that's the end of the Taiwan adventure. I have to say this is probably one of the best places I've ever been for all the reasons mentioned throughout this post, scenery, food, transport, people and shops.

Even in 10 days we still didn't get a chance to see loads of other great places in the country and this is somewhere I'd definitely come back to. until lots of my teacher buddies visited Taiwan and came back saying how amazing it was I never thought of this place as a tourist destination.

I'll certainly be looking to come back here again!!!

Day trip to Jiufen near Taipei

We arrived back in Taipei late last night and today went on a day trip to a place called Jiufen. 

This is a little down about an hours train and bus ride from Taipei, set in the mountains and overlooking the coast.

As you can see it offers great views of the coast. This town used to be a gold mining town but became deserted when the gold ran out. After a while the locals and tourists starting coming as its a pretty nice place.

There are lots of old street lined with great food to walk down. My friend advised me before I came here not to  go to the town at weekends as it greats busy. As we were running out of time we had to go at the weekend and as you can see from the pictures below it was very busy!

Still an great place to see and a lovely day trip. Tomorrow is our last day in Taipei before flying home in the early hours. We still have some more fund stuff planned through.

Riding down the east coast of Taiwan

Today was spent riding down the east coast of Taiwan. We checked out of our hotel (that evening we'd be going back to Taipei, left our bags at the hotel and hired a scooter from just outside the train station.

I'd say that in a few hours we managed to drive down a fifth of the east coast. We were recommended to do this as the road hugs the coastline and offers great views of mountains and the pacific ocean. 

Again, as you can see this was another amazing day with spectacular scenery. Halfway through the journey we went through the mountains which were all up in the clouds to take a different road home. 

 

It was so awesome to see big jungle covered mountains that drop straight into the sea. Throughout the journey there were places where we could stop and take photos. It was pretty chilly in places on the bike so it was also nice to stop and warm up.

This wasn't something we had in the plan but I'm so glad we did it. Such a lovely day!

Taroko National Park, Hualien

After spending a day faffing around and traveling from Taipei, we arrived in Taroko National Park yesterday late afternoon and today we went to Taroko Gorge.

We hired a scooter to visit the park which was pretty spectacular as I think the photos show. The gorge consists of limestone cliffs that have been formed over millions of years which now has a river running through it.

The mountains are pretty big and there were various walking paths where you could stop and hike. There was also a very cool rope bridge!

In some places the gorge was very thin which meant the water flowed through very quickly. 

In addition, there were some good roads that you could take to drive into the mountains that had pretty cool views.

We had an awesome day looking around this national park. This is really the biggest attraction in Taiwan and I can see why. It was pretty quiet which was really nice.